BC Discovery Fund Invests in MovieSet
British Columbia Discovery Fund (VCC) Inc. announced today that it has invested $1.5 Million into MovieSet as part of a $5 million financing. The first tranche of the $5 Million was led by Rho Canada - the Canadian venture arm of Rho Capital Partners of New York. In connection with this investment, Charles Cook of Discovery Capital Management Corp., the manager of the Fund, has been appointed to the board of directors of MovieSet.
“BC Discovery Fund is excited to be making its first investment in a Web 2.0 business. MovieSet has created a unique interactive social networking environment for the film industry and its fans,” said Charles Cook, Investment Manager of the Fund. “We expect that MovieSet can capture a substantial audience of unique visitors, enabling the Company to capitalize on the interest, and positive investment outcomes, that other successful social networking websites have generated.”
With this investment in MovieSet, the BC Discovery Fund has made investments totaling $9.3 million so far in 2008.
Electronic Arts gets an Agent
Historically video game producers have relyed heavily on established comic book and literary franchises for game concepts but it seems the tables have turned and the list of films based on video games continues to grow.
Electronic Arts (EA) announced today that it has signed on with Hollywood talent and literary agency United Talent Agency (UTA) for representation in motion pictures and television. UTA will help the company develop a comprehensive strategy for moving its intellectual property into the realm of large-budget motion pictures and television series.
EA’s portfolio of titles includes top-selling franchises such as Army of Two and Need for Speed as well as eagerly awaited new titles such as Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge. The relationship is expected to significantly ramp up EA’s film and television slate, which currently includes a feature version of the popular The Sims game in script development at 20th Century Fox with producer John Davis and a MySims animated television series in development at Film Roman. EA is also in production with Starz/Film Roman on an animated DVD feature version of its new title Dead Space to launch with the game.
Gravity Factor takes on Marqui
Since we broke the Marqui Receivership story in June, Marqui clients have been wondering what’s going to happen to their content if a buyer doesnt pick up the SaaS company’s assets. As of today it looks like there might be another option in the market for clients in search of a replacement marketing automation solution.
Vancouver-based Gravity Factor Inc. launched a new marketing automation suite today that enables mid-market and B2B marketing professionals easily execute and rapidly improve the effectiveness of their demand generation activities.
From one easy-to-use dashboard, sales and marketing teams will be able to control online brand and messaging, generate more qualified leads, drive revenue, and evaluate and optimize their marketing activities within Salesforce.com, or another CRM, in order to make better business decisions.
Gravity Factor’s CEO is Rick Patri a former Marqui executive. Gravity Factor claims to be the first suite combining Content Management, Email Marketing, Mobile Marketing , eCommerce, CRM and Analytics.
Interesting side note - Marqui’s trademarked tagline is The Marketing Automation Company and Gravity Factor has adopted The Marketing Automation Experts as their brand-differentiating slogan. Nice.
Cloud Computing Hits Mainstream Press
Every once in a while, a buzzword comes along in the tech industry with enough momentum to bubble up to the mainstream and become a marketing term. We’ve clearly now hit that point with “cloud computing”, of which an article on it appeared in today’s 24 Hours Vancouver paper. Fortunately, it was written by the technically competent Buzz Bishop, interviewing walking social network Boris Mann.
Computer Science/Engineering students have grown with the idea of the Internet as a cloud, as commonly depicted in textbook flowcharts. Cloud computing modifies this metaphor slightly, referring to virtual machine or distributed services where you’re interacting with the service, a cluster of machines, as opposed to one particular server. Apple’s MobileMe service (formerly .Mac) openly embraces the concept and brings it further mainstream, with a logo that centers around a cloud.
This weekend, Amazon S3, one of the top cloud storage services, experienced an eight hour downtime that impacted many web apps that depend on the service. While cloud services are proving themselves as the most efficent and cost effective way to host modern web applications, these spots of downtime show that just like Ajax and Web 2.0, the cloud isn’t magic.
IDC’s 10 Canadian Web 2.0 Companies to Watch
Global research powerhouse IDC has released their 10 Canadian Web 2.0 Companies to Watch list today and Mark MacLeod of StartupCFO was kind enough to republish the companies online.
- AdHack - Vancouver
- dthree Inc. - Mississauga
- Octopz - Toronto
- Overlay.TV - Ottawa
- PlanetEye - Toronto
- Ramius Corporation - Ottawa
- SceneCaster - Richmond Hill
- Standout Jobs - Montreal
- Tomoye Corporation - Gatineau
- Tungle - Montreal
This IDC study profiles 10 relatively small Canadian-based companies offering Web 2.0 solutions that IDC believes are worthy of highlighting to the broader industry and have the potential to make an impact in the information and communication technology (ICT) market.
This study provides a review of each company’s technology and go-to-market strategy and a customer example. It concludes with some of the overarching trends IDC is seeing in this market, the strategies and characteristics these 10 companies share, and essential guidance and analysis. This study also provides valuable input for ICT vendors large and small, investors, government, and service providers to identify success factors employed by emerging Canadian vendors with Web 2.0 solutions.
The 30-page report was written by IDC Canadian ICT Innovation analyst Krista Collins and it’s available for $3,500. Ouch. Anybody have a copy?
Cyberinfrastructure Summit in Banff
Cybera is hosting its 2nd annual Cyberinfrastructure Summit at the Banff Centre in Banff on September 29-30. Cybera Summit 08 will bring together cyberinfrastructure users, collaborators and innovators. The focus will be to build, strengthen and expand the cyberinfrastructure foundation in Alberta’s private sector and research community.
Summit Sessions:
Green IT / Clean Tech - It’s not that easy being green. In this session, we’ll look at the push for IT to go green. How can you ‘green up’ your IT operations? What are the cost benefits? Why is this important to your business?
Grassroots Innovation - DemoCampBanff - Where does innovation start? Demo Camp for one. These groups thrive on their ad-hoc organization and “no rules” rules. Talk about a fertile landscape for innovative ideas! Join us for a special Banff edition of Demo Camp.
Cloud Computing and Other Trends to Watch - The innovation landscape is constantly changing. In this session, we’ll focus on the top trends guiding this transition and what impacts these changes have on your business as well as your research and development activities.
Cyber-Venture Opportunities - Showing you the money. In this session, we’ll examine the business behind cyberinfrastructure – the venture capital and commercialization opportunities, as well as the new Alberta Action Plan: Bringing Technology to Market.
Disruptive Technologies - Blessing or bane? In this session, we’ll look at how disruptive technologies are changing the landscape, raising the bar and pushing the bounds of all that was possible in business and research.
Keynote Speakers:
- Bill Appelbe -Chief Executive Officer, Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing
- Paul Strong - Distinguished Research Scientist, eBay
- Nora Young - Producer and Host of Spark, CBC Radio
Who Should Attend?
- IT managers and executives
- Business strategy senior management
- Industry Researchers
- Small business and startups
- Technology advisors, CIOs, project managers, government ministry staff, graduate students
- Research community
This Summit will cater to anyone affiliated with the private sector, research organizations or academia that’s interested in cyberinfrastructure. It will also cater to those who have questions like, “How can I do my work more efficiently?” “How can I improve my business’s bottom line?” and “How can technology help me expand the possibilities of what I can achieve?” The Summit should also appeal to people looking to tap into Alberta’s innovative, forward-thinking community.
For more information and to register, visit the Cybera Summit 08 website.
Sun and Joyent Partner For Free Social App Hosting
Sun and Joyent are announcing today a program to offer 12 months of free hosting for Facebook and OpenSocial applications. Using Sun’s servers running OpenSolaris, powering Joyent Accelerators virtual servers, a social application can be prepared to cope with rapid scaling if they become an overnight success. Free hosting is quite compatible with the monetization difficulty of Facebook applications; quite hard. Hopefully within 12 months, you’ll either figure out how to monetize the app, or have convinced your Grandma to fund you.
Sun’s business model has traditionally been selling servers, so it’s good to see them supporting cloud hosting. Increasingly, “the cloud” is proving itself more cost effective and efficient alternative to server ownership. Further, their recent open sourcing of Solaris into OpenSolaris makes it a viable option for developers who would normally pass on it for a free, capable Linux distribution.
In support of this program, Sun and Joyent are holding a training tour that will hit San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Vancouver, among others. Er, they don’t seem to have dates posted yet, but I’ll update this post when I see them, and post to the Techvibes event calendar.
VEF looks to gain Momentum with Young Entrepreneurs
The Vancouver Enterprise Forum’s (VEF) mission is to advance technology entrepreneurship through networking forums that educate and motivate. They’ve been doing it for years through monthly networking events that are paired with informational presentations targeted to the technology community. As a not-for-profit society VEF is supported by its sponsors, its members, event attendees and volunteers.
Word on the street is that the VEF is in search of a way to connect and educate with the next generation of young entrepreneurs and I had a chance to meet a couple of the drivers behind the VEF’s newest initiative - VEF Momentum.
Na’im Merchant and Kerry Liu are both by-products of Enterprize - one of the largest entrepreneurial student-led conferences in the world and their mandate is to inject a little youthful enthusiasm into the staid VEF. How are they going to do that? Content that builds community and is relevant to first-time entrepreneurs and events that are open, accessible and conducive to networking and peer-mentorship.
Look out for the launch of their new site next week and their inaugural networking event in September.
Canadian Wireless Spectrum Auction Ends With Seven New Entrants
331 rounds, 39 days, 27 companies, $4.25 billion in revenue, and the Canadian wireless spectrum auction is over. The total amount raised vastly exceeded expectation, an encouraging start to what promises to be a new era in Canadian wireless competition. The auction was still dominated by the big three: Rogers ($999M), Telus ($880M), and Bell ($741M). However, 40% of the licenses were set aside for new entrants, with winners Globalive ($442M nationwide) Quebecor ($555M in Quebec), Data & Audio-Visual Enterprises ($243M in Ontario, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Victoria), Shaw ($190M in BC, Alberta, Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, and northern Ontario), Manitoba Telecom ($41M in Manitoba), Bragg Communications ($25M in Atlantic Canada), and the unglamorously named, US equity-backed 6934579 Canada Inc. ($52M in Ontario and Quebec). Check this Google Maps mashup for a breakdown by province.
With these new entrants, each province should get at least two new choices for wireless service. Of course, I remember a time when there were 2 or 3 other wireless companies to choose from, before mergers and acquisitions led to the current cerberus of RoBellus (variations considered: Tellogers, Bellogus). Hopefully we don’t find ourselves back in a wireless oligopoly in ten or twenty years.
$4.25 billion is a nice chunk of revenue for the Canadian government, handy to pay for things like an indefinite occupation of a country that posed no real threat, and it seems they are wasting no time to do it again. Via Reuters, Industry Minister Jim Prentice has said that an auction of 700 MHz airwaves will happen in “about 18 months”. The US recently auctioned their 700 MHz spectrum and raised $19.592 billion.
A spectrum auction isn’t the kind of thing that gets a lot of mainstream media attention, as the idea of selling airwaves seems strange, if not impossible, and some might argue immoral. For some thoughts on this subject, I present an excerpt from an essay “The Property Status of Airwaves”, by author and philosopher Ayn Rand, published April 1964.
Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property - by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort.
This is particularly true of broadcasting frequencies or waves, because they are produced by human action and do not exist without it. What exists in nature is only the potential and the medium through which those waves must travel. (That medium is not air; in legal discussions it is often referred to by the mythical term of “ether” - to indicate some element in space, at present unidentified.) Without the broadcasting station which generates the waves, that “ether” - on our present level of knowledge — is of no practical use or value to anyone.
Essay continues after the jump.
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Calgoo Drops Freemium for Free
Vancouver calendar syncing and sharing company Calgoo has decided to release all of its products for free. A free version of Calgoo’s software has always been available however their freemium model had them charging $30 a year for fully featured pro accounts. Here’s the official announcement:
All Calgoo Software products, Calendar, Connect, and Hub are now free. Existing paid subscribers will still receive full email support in addition to the forum support all users have access to, for the duration of their license. Each Calgoo product has its own revamped section on Calgoo.com. These sections provide our users with more concise information on the products as well as a more organized workflow.
Calgoo is a calendaring tool that allows you to sync calendars across platforms, including iCal, Google Calendar, and Outlook. Over hte last two years, Calgoo has developed into a mature calendar sharing solution with three separate products: Calgoo Calendar, Calgoo Connect, and Calgoo Hub.
Not sure where this leaves Calgoo - they’ve gone from obviously having not enough paying users to having none.
